As Trump’s legal troubles mount punters now make it a 34% chance that he’ll win WH2020

As Trump’s legal troubles mount punters now make it a 34% chance that he’ll win WH2020

A good bet but which way?

If it wasn’t for Brexit we’d be doing several threads a week about the US and particularly the prospects for Trump as the investigations appear to be getting closer.

With the Mueller probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 campaign coming to a head it’s highly likely that we could see a lot of activity on Trump survival betting markets in the coming days and weeks. This is how the New York Times is summing up where things are.

The latest revelations by prosecutors investigating President Trump and his team draw a portrait of a candidate who personally directed an illegal scheme to manipulate the 2016 election and whose advisers had more contact with Russia than Mr. Trump has ever acknowledged.

In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in their memo that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.”

Both his former campaign chief and personal attorney looks set to be facing possible long prison sentences and each new development seems to bring us closer to the Oval Office.

    Looking to the next presidential election it is hard to envisage anything about Trump that will undermine the confidence that his core base has in him. But to win again against a fired up Democratic party he needs more than just the core and has to appeal to independents and Trump sceptics who are currently Republican Party voters.

I think a lot depends on whether the GOP establishment is ready to stick with Trump for another four years. After last month’s midterm setback Trump might struggle to be seen as the electoral asset that he was. Having him at the top of the ticket in November 2020 might hinder the party in the multitude of races for all the other positions on that day? A real worry as we saw in the midterms, is that the incumbent is a big turnout driver for the other side.

There are several betting markets. The biggest, of course, is who will be next president which currently has Trump at a 34% chance. There is also betting on the Republican party nomination where Trump’s chances are currently rated at about 67%. You can all have bets on the year of Trump’s final departure from the White House and whether or not he will finish a full first term.

My current best WH2020 bets, all placed some time ago, are 66/1 on Kamala Harris, 270/1 on outgoing Colorado Governor, John Hickenlooper and 25/1 on Beto O’Rourke.

Mike Smithson


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